French Exit

Please note that this story contains accounts of substance use and content of a sexual nature

“There’s a war going on.”

I pick at a hangnail on my finger and try to ignore the voice in my ear, circling around me like a fly. This is Jade’s new topic: the war. She simpers at the body count and repeats things I’ve already seen on the news. My mouth stays shut like a trap. I nod. I sip my drink. The vodka is cheap and bad, the ice is melting and the wedge of lime looks lost, pressed up against the inside of the glass. I swill it around, as though being warm and watery might improve the taste; condensation coats my fingers and I realise I could let the whole thing slide from my grip. It would be so easy. The shattering glass might break the coiled spring building in my muscles. I don’t know why I feel like this - like I’m chipped glass, on the verge of cracking, and on the other side of the glass, too. If I impact my environment I might feel more real. But that would be messy, and awkward, and I’d have to explain myself. People would look at me. At least now, they’re staring at each other or into their drinks. As I consider this, the droning stops expectantly. I look at Jade, at her upturned face. She’s lost a lot of weight recently. I’m conscious of the way my eyes land on her collar bones. I try not to look at her wrists.

“It feels surreal, right?” I supply.

My voice feels syrupy. Jade nods, says something I don’t catch about Duchamp. I’m bored of this conversation already, but I know Jade will pick over the artistic implications like a vulture with a corpse. I tell myself that I’m being unkind, because she’s just like the rest of us, she’s trying to make sense of yet another news cycle. I’m annoyed by my judgements and by my own guilt, and I realise that I shouldn’t have any more to drink. But I like feeling slower, I like the warm numbness on my face. When I drink, I don’t worry if I’m pulling the right expressions at the right time, and if I’m not, if the whole facade fails, nobody even notices. When I put my glass down on the coffee table, it makes a dull clunk. This table is midcentury, secondhand, covered in rolling papers and empty filter boxes and crumbs of tobacco. Jade bought it online for fifty quid. I helped her haul it here from Greenwich, and when we got it back into the flat we realised that it probably had woodworm. In the candlelight (a recent affectation of Jade’s), I can’t see the telltale little holes.

“Need to pee,” I mumble.

Jade’s forgotten about me, she’s looking over at her new fling anyway, enamoured as he rolls her a joint. His name is Jack, or maybe Joseph. He’s tall and he speaks in a way that makes me think he had a stutter as a child: he’s quite precise, in his own way. I relish not being subject to this conversation, but I eye the joint. Probably not a good idea. As I stand, I’m pleasantly surprised by the way my legs move. The shambolic sound that escaped my mouth when I spoke made me question if I’d even get this far. I could have gone face-first into the table as I attempted to get up, fracturing my skull. I picture it in slow motion, the glass in my hair like a delicate tiara of frost. Tiny droplets of blood, slowly spreading outwards. Ice sliding everywhere, tequila and gin and red wine mixing in my mouth, my eyes. I blink and rub my wet fingertips together as I walk to the bathroom.

Under the fluorescent bathroom lights, my skin looks pallid and cold, lacking some vital part. Mascara flakes drift from my lashes to the bags under my eyes. I spy lines in my forehead. Is twenty-seven too young for wrinkles? Or have I just been brainwashed by the media? Years of airbrushed images downloaded straight into my psyche so that this dingy bathroom mirror in East London can tell me if I’m real. I wonder if I’ve failed the mirror’s test while I type Botox? into my phone’s note taking app. Everyone has Botox now. Faces full of branded botulism, reading the news and booking your smear test. I arch my eyebrows, and my reflection looks back, imperious. I try to imagine walking around like that permanently. If everyone has Botox now, how long will it be before the full range of motion becomes fashionable again? I try to corral my thoughts into something worth thinking, worth writing down and turning into a pithy tweet or maybe even a pitch. My phone buzzes against the sink. Did I put it down? I must have. I need to go home soon.

Botox? is obscured by a banner with a message preview. I’ve been waiting for this all night. I scan the first line, but I’m interrupted as more messages come through. I feel my lips peel back, parting over my teeth. I hate this smile, I hate how easily it’s summoned. I should be in the living room with my friends, pouring drinks and telling jokes and talking about the fucking war and the cost of rent and why capitalism is to blame. And it’s not that I’m lying. I care about these things. But they don’t feel real. When I was younger, I followed politics and wrote poems and debated policies and ideology and purpose. Now, I feel exhausted by it all. Talking in a living room isn’t going to change the way the world works. I suppose it’s nice to pretend that it might, but I’m too busy pretending about everything else to take on the world, too.

Besides, Jade is an actor. She needs an audience. She gets her adoration and her artistic dick sucked when she pontificates at house parties. So Jade can talk about the war and the death count and the bodies in the street, and we’ll listen. We’ll say the right lines at the right time, even though none of us has ever seen a dead body. We’re so distant from what we’re meant to feel, no wonder we’ll let an actor direct us. We’re all performing humanity for each other, looking off stage left when we think no one will notice.

Maybe I really have drunk too much. At least I don’t have to worry about alcohol-induced erectile dysfunction. If I’m too wasted, I might fall asleep but some guys are into that anyway. They like it when women don’t move or make a sound, just warm holes to fuck — maybe they don’t even have to be warm. I haven’t asked Finn if he’s a necrophiliac, so I file that question away for later. I like asking people questions like that. I like it when they don’t expect it and their answers are unprepared. I’ve been seeing Finn for a few weeks. I think he might be a narcissist.

Ever since we started texting, he alternates between ignoring me and showering me attention. Jade says that it’s unsustainable. She thinks I’ll get bored of him eventually. Just like the other two, she’d told me over a gin on a rooftop. Maybe so, I’d smiled as I sipped my drink. Jade was more fun when she wasn’t with her boyfriends, but like me, she goes through them fast. The initial attraction draws her in, the idea of someone dazzling and charming and intelligent and amazing in bed. But then they snore, or have mummy issues, or they realise Jade isn’t who they thought she was. And it all ends randomly on a Tuesday at 2 pm, a flurry of tensely worded texts designed to convey subtext without actually meaning anything except go away, leave me alone, you failed to live up to my ideal.

My phone buzzes again. Finn has sent me a photo of his dick. He’s not that well endowed, but he’s short, so it looks better in proportion. I send him back a picture of my open mouth, cropped so that he can’t see my whole face. That’s all he needs. The stream of texts grows explicit, obscene, detailed. I put my phone in my jeans pocket, wash my hands, and then step into the hallway. A couple is pressed up against the wall, making foul little slurping sounds as they kiss. I avert my eyes on instinct. I don’t have an issue with public displays of affection, I just don’t know where to look; if I watch, I become the voyeur. If I look away, I’m the prude. There’s no safe place to land, and it feels too complex to Google, so instead I look at the floor while I wipe my damp hands against my thighs. In the living room, the rumble of voices has taken on a hushed quality, and I think maybe Jade has promoted herself from pontiff to Messiah. I peer in, lingering at the threshold. She’s draped over Jack-or-Joseph. Freya has her back to me, a symptom of the fight we’re both pretending not to be having. It’s a stupid argument, one that began because I forgot to ask about how her dissertation was going. Since then, we’ve swapped barbs and bitched about each other to all our friends. I know that I’ve come off worse because I kissed her boyfriend, but nobody here would say that to my face. Including Freya: we’ve ignored each other all evening. She hasn’t once looked at me directly, she’s been sneaking glances as she turns her head, like a prey animal. It makes me want to tuck my chin down and snarl at her, lupine or vulpine or leonine. Something with big, snapping jaws. I hate how passive she is. It’s pathetic. In the low light, I can see the shiny white of her scalp, the light brown hair at the root which is at odds with the black dye everywhere else. I wonder if she knows she has the beginnings of a bald spot.

“The problem with monogamy is that it isn’t realistic, you know.” Jade holds her disciples captive, gesturing with the joint balanced carelessly between her fingers. “You don’t say that anywhere else in your life, that you can only have one friend, or one job, or one hobby, or one passion. It’s just that when sex gets involved, the whole history of the West is all Christian-centric and makes everything about sin. So if you think about it, monogamy is just this, like, medieval attempt to minimise sin and get everyone to Heaven. We shouldn’t be living our lives according to this stupid rule from, like, the twelve-hundreds or whatever. Honestly, if more people were honest about not being monogamous, no one would get actually cheated on. You see?”

Jack-or-Joseph nods along mildly. The other heads bounce like little car ornaments, desperate for Jade to grace them with more of her attention. It’s a rehearsed rant I’ve heard before, and one which loops back round on itself. That’s the joy of a circular argument, I guess. I feel a yawn tangling around my jaw, but I force it down. I’m not tired. But I am getting bored of this crowd. I thought there’d be more people here, but it’s mostly Jade’s actor friends and they’ve all done a show together, so they’ve tangled up their lives for the last three months. They’ll pretend to like each other for a few more weeks, then one of them will say something problematic, or sleep with someone they shouldn’t, or make a comment about their invoice. Then I’ll get my friend back. Jade always ends up hanging out with me when the shine comes off spending time with other actors. She likes it when I say horrible things about people we know. And like everyone we know, I like to indulge her. I’m no different to the crowd at her feet.

The clock on the wall tells me it’s still early, and I guess they’ll keep going, smoking and talking in circles. But I’m hungry and irritable and Finn’s messages are curling around my thoughts; I could skip this party and smoke with him, instead. We could have our own pretentious conversations about monogamy and wars and culture and art. He’s the only man I’ve ever slept with whose creative endeavours don’t make me cringe. Some of his songs are even good. I move around the edges of the gathered congregation of the Church of Jade, hunting for my coat and bag from the pile. I’d already made my mind up before Finn texted me. His invitation has provided me with a destination, but I knew I wasn’t spending all night here. Sorry Jade, I think, not feeling apologetic in the least.

“You’re leaving?” She calls out, as if she’s read my mind. I wince. My dreams of a swift departure dissipate in front of my eyes.

“Yeah, think so,” I reply, not bothering to give a reason. I don’t have work tomorrow. I could lie about a family thing but Jade knows my whole family. And anyway, I can’t be bothered. I meet her gaze. Her eyes look shiny, like they burn from within with tiny dancing lights. I wish I looked like that when I was stoned.

"Don’t go.” Jade commands me like she does everyone else here. I don’t move, I don’t drop my bag, which is what she wants me to do. So she stands up, crossing through her audience like Moses parting the Red Sea.

“Don’t, it’s so early.” Her eyes are wide and glossy and she’s pouting theatrically. I twirl her hair around my fingers.

“I’m pretty drunk, Jade,” I mutter to her, like it’s a secret I only entrust to her. She nods, conspiratorially. She likes secrets. “

"Then stay the night. We’ll make room. It’s honestly fine, just stay, Joe will make pancakes in the morning.”

My gaze slides over to Joe, whose name I now know and who is leaning back on the sofa and staring at the ceiling.

“Come on,” Jade whines.

In my pocket, my phone vibrates.

“I’m gonna head, Jade. Let’s do something in the week though?” I know she’s disappointed. “Wednesday. We’ll get dinner.”

Jade doesn’t look convinced until I tap the side of my nose, at which point she arches an eyebrow. I adore this silent communication between us, years of friendship crammed into empty space. I can convince her to let me go now. I just have to remember to buy coke before Wednesday. Jade pulls me in for a hug, and I know my absence is forgiven already. I kiss her cheek.

"Be good,” I tell her. She grins impishly and tilts her head back to Joe. I don’t think he’ll be much use for her tonight, but I stay quiet. I’m escaping at only the cost of a bag, and therefore unwilling to risk any further upset. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Freya looking up at us. Freya thinks that Jade is her best friend because Jade invites her out, and I know she’s threatened by our years-long friendship. Behind her back, Jade calls Freya a crybaby little bitch drama queen, which is an apt description in my opinion. Jade doesn’t like drama, she likes plots; no feelings, just the unravelling of a fun story told in under a minute. Freya’s stories are rambling, disjointed, and she’s always complaining about how hard it is to date in London. I look down at her, and she turns her head so quickly that I think that she might snap her neck. Now that would be interesting, maybe the most interesting thing she could do. Jade’s already retreating to her spot on Joe’s lap, and I wave at her. She wiggles her fingers back at me.

“Bye guys.” It comes out sing-song and makes me cringe. Everyone waves back at me, though half of them don’t even know who I am. When I get onto the street outside, I suck down the crisp night air. I fucking hate Jade’s friends.